Why the divide between what teens read recreationally and study?

Ask Alice is an online column produced by the #LoveOzYA team, and written by our former Secretary, Alice Boer-Endacott, who has published several young adult fantasy novels and a non-fiction essay.

Ask Alice is designed to unpack all aspects of the Australian young adult literary scene, so if you’ve got a question, go ahead and Ask Alice!

Ah, the end of January. A time when many of us are looking to the beginning of the school year. As the high school students I tutor start telling me what they’re studying this year, and we inevitably gripe about some of the texts chosen, one’s thoughts turn to the how and why of text selection. In this context, it seems almost providential that I recently came across this article which suggested poor study design (which includes text selection) directs students to hate English.

I strongly agree with many of the claims in the article, and strongly disagree with many others. Honestly, I could devote an entire column to just pulling apart the claim about the choice of increasingly shorter texts pandering to a shorter attention span in students (the comment about The Bluest Eye vs Beloved in particular I have thoughts about).

However, even taking into account the fact that this article speaks to an American context, the claim that text choices (and the way they are taught) in essence instils a dread of English and reading caught my interest.

With the Deakin Teen Reading Project (who are, as long-time readers will know, my faves) wrapping up and publishing the raw data of titles nominated by teens as the book they enjoyed reading the most in the past year, you can see how I became curious about whether there is crossover between what young people read and what they study, and why that might or might not be the case.

The raw data itself is quite interesting. I take heart at the breadth and depth to what younger readers seem to be putting in front of their eyeballs (or consuming via audiobook). The top 5, though, are as follows:

1. Harry Potter series
2. Hunger Games series
3. One of Us is Lying series
4. It Ends With Us
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid series

It’s a fair bit of variation. I’m curious about the popularity of Colleen Hoover and would be fascinated to know how many of those readers found the book via BookTok, but I digress. I’ve actually seen a few of these studied at lower year levels. However, this has been exclusively in lower year levels, getting up to, at most, year 9.

It got me thinking – while books that might be written for a younger readership often use less complex language, that doesn’t mean they aren’t complex overall. Moreover, it doesn’t mean there isn’t value in studying them within a framework of the more sophisticated skills developed across later years of schooling. So with that in mind, this month’s question: is there a reason for the difference between what teens read and study, arose.

To help answer it, I reached out to Dr Annelise Balsamo, the English Curriculum Manager at the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA), and Dr Elizabeth Little, a high school teacher-turned academic at Deakin University, and Board member of our own LoveOzYA(!).

Let’s start with what’s actually studied at the most senior years of school. In Victoria, only students in year 12 (the final year) are required to study texts from a set list. Otherwise, as Annelise emphasised, schools are encouraged to select texts which, “best suit their context and cohort.” However, VCAA does set guidelines requiring meaningful engagement with “literary texts created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and illustrators and a wide range of Australian and world authors and illustrators,” and include of a variety of text types (ie, film, play, short story, novel; non-fiction, and fiction, which should range across a various structures, narrative perspectives and techniques).

By contrast, in Western Australia, as per the 2025 Year 12 Syllabus, while there is a suggested list, “teachers may substitute comparable works for any of these.”

So while Victoria requires certain texts be studied, WA suggests certain texts. But Alice, I hear you asking, what is on those lists? Well, I’m glad you asked, because this is where things started to get really interesting.

Both lists have texts written by a variety of authors, spanning several forms, with a variety of settings, narrative perspectives, and diverse characters. However, the Victorian 2025 text list is, interestingly, much more conservative than that of Western Australia, with the majority of texts being what I would refer to as quite ‘literary,’ which, by and large, directly engage with ‘big’ issues such as mental health (We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirely Jackson), environmentalism (Flames, Robbie Arnett), or the legacy of a colonialist past (Rainbow’s End, Jane Harrison/High Ground, Stephen Johnson).

By contrast, although some of the usual suspects, such as A Streetcar Named Desire and The Great Gatsby appear on the Western Australian list, so too does the film adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle (aside: it is 110% worth visiting the Ghibli theme park for the Howl section) and the Captain America comics. John Newman, from the School Curriculum and Standards Authority in Western Australia said, when I emailed through to enquire about their process which ranges across so many text types and genres, noted the freedom given to teachers at a classroom level. For instance, when I asked about how television shows were taught, he replied “teachers may select episodes that align with and effectively support the syllabus content they are teaching.”

At this point, you could be forgiven for thinking I’m taking a long run up into a brutal critique of one or more of these study designs. I’m actually not. I have huge sympathy and respect for the difficulty of putting together a list of titles. This is born in part my own experience co-ordinating a postgraduate subject called ‘The Power of Ideas: 10 Great Books:’ absolutely everybody has an opinion on what those 10 books should be. Moreover, absolutely everybody shares that opinion with me, regardless of whether I’ve invited it. However, the second you start to get into the weeds of it, you discover that there’s a difference between a good read, and a good book (or film, or play, or graphic novel…) to study – especially when you’re thinking about how it complements other texts being studied, and how it interacts with an overarching pedagogical purpose.

So how are texts chosen? Well, before we think about the texts being studied, we need to consider the overall goal of the subject.

Elizabeth, quite eloquently, spoke of “the role of the English classroom in showing people a world beyond what they know, making it a productive space to challenge students to grow in ways they might not have expected.”

Part of that would naturally be reading and studying texts they otherwise might never select for recreational reading.

This would support Annelise’s comment, “The texts we set for study in Unit 3 and 4 can reflect students’ experience but often push beyond what they might have experienced, offering them windows into the experiences of others, building understanding and compassion.”

The VCE English and EAL Study Guide states in its opening pages that the curriculum is designed to focus on “how the English language is used to create meaning.” 

I asked Annelise to elaborate on this. She replied: “making meaning begins as students develop their capacity to read through decoding and building fluency, through to comprehension and analysis of text, and into application of that understanding when creating their own texts. There might be explication of authorial intent when analysing text, or when creating text, but meaning is a broad term.”

I’d argue this is broadly mirrored in the ATAR Syllabus for Teaching Year 12 in 2025 for Western Australia. Under the ‘Rationale’ section, it notes:

“The English ATAR course focuses on developing students’ analytical, creative, and critical thinking and communication skills in all language modes. It encourages students to critically engage with texts from their contemporary world, with texts from the past and with texts from Australian and other cultures. Such engagement helps students develop a sense of themselves, their world and their place in it. Through close study and wide reading, viewing and listening, students develop the ability to analyse and evaluate the purpose, stylistic qualities and conventions of texts and enjoy creating their own imaginative, interpretive, persuasive and analytical responses. The English ATAR course is designed to develop students’ facility with all types of texts and language modes and to foster an appreciation of the value of English for lifelong learning.”

I’m going to add my interpretation and summary. At the core, it would seem general English subjects in Australia look to develop the following skills:

Initially, the capacity to be literate – to be able to read sentences and understand what the words individually and together mean. In studying texts, it seeks to instill in students the ability to understand the plot at its most literal level – what is happening. This might seem obvious, but it’s not a guarantee given how convoluted plots can get; we only need look to some Shakespeare comedies as an example, however, it also requires understanding of the text’s context, which might be very different from a student’s own lived experience and thus requires learning about such a context.

From there, the subject seeks to give students the capacity to understand what might be going on at a deeper level, what ‘bigger’ ideas or themes might be present within the text, which includes being able to arrive at their own interpretations, and the ability to articulate the enduring relevance of a text.

Moreover, it seeks to give students the tools to explain how the construction of the text conveys that literal meaning, as well as those broader meanings. Finally, with all this as a base, it seeks to give students the tools to express themselves and their ideas in an eloquent and structured fashion while also inviting them to consider the vastness of lived experiences within the world.

It’s a lot to ask of a single subject. So it makes sense that selection of the texts is going to be tricky.

So how do you navigate it all?

Well, at the Victorian year 12 level, Annelise shared:

“Each year, the VCAA convenes a text advisory panel from between ten and fourteen members […] from all sectors (government, catholic and independent) and across both regional and metro Victoria. They are all experienced VCE English and EAL teachers and assessors. […] Between February and October, the panel meets once a month for up to two hours to discuss between five and eight texts that have been either nominated by stakeholders through a survey conducted in August every year or by panel members. By October, the panel makes recommendations for the replacement texts. These recommendations are then endorsed by the Board of the VCAA.

The criteria used to select texts for inclusion on the list requires that texts:

• have literary merit
• be an excellent example of form and genre
• sustain intensive study, raising interesting issues and providing challenging ideas
• reflect current community standards and expectations in the context of senior secondary study of texts.”

Similarly, John said of the Western Australian texts: “suggested texts are selected primarily for their ability to engage students with syllabus content at an appropriate level of complexity, ensuring the content of the course is effectively delivered.”

Annelise made an interesting point, “The VCAA sets text for Unit 3 and 4 only, and we recognise that teachers and schools are better placed to choose texts for their students and for their context.” Certainly, when you’re trying to curate a list of texts which can speak to every single student in Victoria both in terms of capability and lived experience, you need to be quite broad. Schools know their student body’s needs, capabilities, and experiences, and their teachers are best placed to curate an English syllabus which engages their students as well as allows them to develop the abovementioned learning outcomes.

Elizabeth shared a journal article she wrote which examines the way Assumption College (also in Victoria) conducted an overhaul of the texts studied across their year levels. I really love the method advanced by this article as a way a teaching team can audit their current syllabus and build a new one, so I’ve included a condensed summary as an appendix to this column.

One of the key takeaways was the collaborative discussion between members of the English teaching staff, and the need for time. Teachers needed time to consume nominated texts, then discuss their merits and drawbacks. Moreover, once they agreed upon a text, they needed to create resources. Elizabeth noted to me, “resource creation is the biggest hurdle to text selection,” because it requires such a substantial amount of time.

So with that in mind, choosing texts to be studied requires teachers to be familiar with them, and to be able to see how they might teach that text (and thus, create appropriate resources).

Bringing this back to YA novels (or at least, the texts students seem to be reading recreationally), many English teachers are unlikely to be familiar with them, and there aren’t necessarily a wealth of teaching resources out there for them. Compounding this is, as Elizabeth observed, ongoing tension which arises from an enduring emphasis on the traditional literary ‘canon’ and classics and accompanying perspective that other texts (and formats) are not considered ‘literary.’ This perception means these kinds of texts are often viewed as ‘easy.’

I directly asked Annelise about this, especially as the Study Design explicitly excludes YA fiction from the year 12 list with the comment, “the study of texts at Years 7 to 10 may include examples of young adult fiction and non-fiction. However, in the senior levels, students will be expected to engage progressively with adult texts that reflect more complex concerns.”

She replied, “we don’t consider this as a hierarchy – the study design advice is not indicating that young adult fiction and non fiction is inherently inferior to adult fiction. The advice, rather, suggests that students can be guided through their reading experience – meeting texts at formative points in their learning. This advice applies to film (which also appear on the VCE English and EAL text list). For example, we are able to set films that are rated at MA15+ because we can be confident that Unit 3 and 4 classrooms will be made up only of students 16 years and older. Like those classifications of film, we consider it important that students are offered texts with concerns and voices that connect with their development appropriately.”

Fair enough. I would still argue that texts which may seem less ‘difficult,’ such as YA texts, deserve to be analysed with the complexity of a year 12 standard. There are many reasons for this, among them, the value which comes from recognizing that even seemingly ‘simple’ texts can in fact be really complex. I’d also suggest it would be quite an interesting exercise for students to be guided to engage with such texts in a totally different way to the manner in which they would if reading them recreationally. However, students can only study so much in the one year, and as noted, this is a delicate balancing act.

Really, being the one who chooses what texts are studied means your choices are always going to be criticised. Would I love to see more YA on a year 12 reading list? Yes. Does that mean I think students should spend class time reading and dissecting A Court of Thorns and Roses (number 33 on the Teen Reading list)? Hmmm….

An enormous thanks to Dr Elizabeth Little, Annelise Balsamo and the VCAA team, and the SCSA team for their contributions to this column (and for adhering to my deadlines!!). 

Appendix: Alice’s brief summary of the method used to review and revise the English curriculum as outlined by Elizabeth Little in her journal article

Teachers came together to discuss what was important to them in teaching and selecting certain texts.

From this, they distilled three questions which were as part of the text selection process:

1. What is guiding the selection of texts?
2. Whose voices, histories and priorities are represented across one year level, and across the years of schooling?
3. How would you describe the proximity of students to the texts that they are studying? (p20)

Teachers formed mini book groups so as to become familiar with possible texts and to then discuss. This was the majority of the team’s non-teaching time across the year, which required the support of and by in from the school leadership.

The teaching team collectively developed criteria to bear in mind when considering texts for the revised curriculum, so as to include a range of narrative styles, genres, gender representation of characters and authors:

• setting (physical)
• Indigenous Australian authors/protagonists
• non-linear/linear narratives
• multiple narrators/single narrators
• ages of protagonist/narrator
• thematic explorations
• setting (physical)
• Indigenous Australian authors/protagonists
• non-linear/linear narratives
• multiple narrators/single narrators
• ages of protagonist/narrator
• thematic explorations.

(p21)

From here, “Groups of three of four staff met to brainstorm potential texts, which were then sourced and distributed within that book group. Once staff had read a novel or watched a movie, they passed it on to other members of the book club before meeting again to discuss its potential inclusion in the curriculum. Each book was assessed against the list of new priorities. Not only were staff working together to decide which texts might work in classrooms, this had the added benefit of broadening the English faculty’s general knowledge of texts that could be appropriate for students’ private reading or future study” p21

From here, staff groups were empowered to select texts for certain year levels, with the requirement for discussion and consensus when arriving at final decisions.